East Meets West: Chinese regulator starts approving new games, China debates long working hours, and Perfect World is world's top grosser

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The Asia market has become the most lucrative and influential region in the global mobile games industry.

Companies in countries such as Japan, South Korea and China are highly successful at home and are increasingly expanding around the world through global game releases, international partnerships and M&A. These markets also offer lucrative opportunities for Western publishers.

To give you a deeper insight into this key region, each week we’re rounding up all the news from PocketGamer.biz and around the web. Don't forget to keep up with the news throughout the week on the Asia section of our site.

China's games regulator is now reviewing both new and old submissions from its backlog simultaneously, opening up this key industry market further following last year's big freeze. But with this good news also comes a number of new regulations that will also see the number of releases each year limited.

It's no secret that Perfect World has been performing well for Tencent, as we've previously reported its top grossing chart positions in China in recent times. Now SuperData estimates that it was in fact the top grossing mobile game in the world in March, above the likes of Honor of Kings, Candy Crush Saga and Pokemon Go.

Nintendo's mobile business continues to grow, this time thanks to the addition of Dragalia Lost to its portfolio. The console giant will be hoping for more though with the upcoming releases of Dr Mario World and Mario Kart Tour.

PUBG continued to be a big revenue driver in 2018, particularly on PC. PUBG Corp will hope however that it finally gets the greenlight for its mobile titles in China to monetise, to boost up platform's revenue share.